Pearl Jam Pumped Up To Hit The Studio

Frontman Eddie Vedder "put rough vocals on about half the stuff we worked on in December," bassist Jeff Ament tells Billboard.com. "There's a handful of really great lyrics. Lyrically, that stuff is in the embryonic stage, but there's a handful of lines and a couple of choruses that are just really great. He keeps getting better."

"I saw [guitarist] Mike [McCready] last night and we were both talking about this song and that song," he continues. "One of the songs we decided would go down a whole step and he was asking me about a chord progression."

... and working with Brendan O'Brien

"He brings a brutally honest approach to what he thinks is working and what isn't, and it really moves things along," he says. We don't get waded down with ideas that maybe aren't even that good. He's one of the few people outside of the band that we trust with our music, and we're really, really looking forward to making this record."